Other Musicals

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Time is easily overlooked because it comes right in the
middle of our getting ready for Christmas. However, it is too wonderful of
an opportunity not to make it musically special. I know many choir
directors don't feel they have time to be concerned with Thanksgiving
because Christmas takes too much of their time. Let me encourage you to do
a mini-Thanksgiving musical that would have pull-out possibilities to use
on any given Sunday. I, along with Lari Goss, have birthed one
Thanksgiving mini-musical In Everything
Give Thanks.

I would suggest starting on this late Summer or the first of September
at the latest. Plan on singing each of the four songs in some service
between September and November 25th. This will give you four new
arrangements for your regular choir repertoire and give you much more
mileage from these songs than just using them for your Thanksgiving
Service. When you do your Thanksgiving service add the narrations and it
will be very special. You can't sing a song like In Everything Give
Thanks too often. To do it only in a Thanksgiving framework
shortchanges many possibilities that the song can offer your congregation.

Nonseasonal

Sometimes choir directors and ministers of music expend so much energy
in their Christmas and Easter productions that they are not often anxious
to take on another musical during the year. With Mother's Day, Father's
Day, and July 4th, it seems like there is no convenient time to consider
choir involvement of a 60-minutes commitment because they would be
starting Christmas around the start of school in September.

Let me encourage you to consider a nonseasonal work such as Greater Is
He or We
Are The Church to come somewhere after Easter and before Fall. The
wonderful luxury of "Nonseasonal Musicals" is that they usually comprise
songs that all have pull-out possibilities. This means that while you are
learning all the songs from the musical, you can be singing selected songs
from the musical (without their narrations) on different Sundays and then
add narrations and any drama and multi-media for the actual performance of
the musical. Also, because of the nature of a nonseasonal musical, you
actually have a lot of flexibility, such as not using all of the songs
from the musical or by substituting some other songs that your choir may
already know that you feel would complement the overall theme of the
nonseasonal musical. You also have a lot of flexibility in performing
nonseasonal musicals. For instance, you might give several performances at
the end of August and turn around and give a few more performances at a
later date such as October.

As a songwriter-publisher I always feel a need to allow opportune
moments during any nonseasonal musical for both Christians to be able to
reconsecrate themselves and for sinners to make a commitment to the cause
of Christ.